The Rebirth of Cape Canaveral

How NASA became a spaceport landlord to companies like Boeing and SpaceX, and saved its iconic Kennedy Space Center in the process.

When the Space Shuttle retired in 2011, a pall came over Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida. The Obama administration had killed the Constellation moonshot program. NASA had no backup. And while the Air Force and United Launch Alliance would keep lofting government payloads into space from Cape Canaveral, there was no way to deliver crew or cargo to the International Space Station (other than to rely on the Russians) and no manned programs on the books.

Compare that dire moment with today's hopeful environment. "Right this minute, we have three different launchpads under construction for three different human spaceflight programs," says Scott Colloredo, director of the Center Planning and Development Directorate at KSC. "That's Complex 41 with the Atlas 5 and Boeing CST-100, 39A with Falcon and SpaceX's Dragon, and then 39B with the Single Launch System and Orion. It's just amazing that we could be at this point, with such a diversification."

"Right this minute, we have three different launchpads under construction."

Colloredo's mission is to spearhead the Center's change from a dedicated shuttle base to what they call a multi-user spaceport. Officials say they're about halfway through the transition, which started in 2011 and is expected to end in 2019. "We control the master plan for Kennedy," Colloredo says. "It's essentially the equivalent of a city that has zoned out its property."

By reorganizing itself from the ground up, KSC is positioning itself for a commercial spaceflight industry that is still embryonic but increasingly hopeful. Even if some of the companies and missions do not develop, there may be enough tenants flying hardware to keep the spaceport viable. The recent signs are encouraging: Last month, Kennedy Space Center released an announcement for proposals for private companies interested in developing commercial vertical launch sites. And just this week the state agency Space Florida approved a long-term deal to lease a 15,000-foot-long strip used to land space shuttles. The goal: Offer it as a place for space companies, like XCOR or Sierra Nevada, to land their spaceplanes.

"There's so many different opportunities, so many different companies, so many different vehicles and we're designing the space center around accommodating all of them," Colloredo says. "It's an extremely interesting world we live in here."

"We control the master plan for Kennedy."

SpaceX's new digs

Colloredo's group is renting and leasing facilities across KSC, the most dramatic of which are its famous launchpads. To see how Kennedy Space Center is reinventing itself is to see how the engineering and salesmanship go hand in hand.

When NASA become a spaceport landlord, the first launchpad rental was 39A. In a battle of billionaires, Elon Musk's SpaceX and Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin bid for the launchpad. Musk prevailed. "That was a big milestone," Colloredo says. "Not only did we convince ourselves we didn't need the pad, but we let a commercial company take it over."

NASA

It'll be a big milestone for SpaceX, too. The company currently uses Pad 40 at Cape Canaveral to launch cargo to the ISS and commercial satellites into orbit. For example, the Falcon 9 that broke apart on the way to the space station this summer launched from Pad 40. But SpaceX is moving to 39A in part because that pad will be able to handle the stress and violence of the company's next rocket, the massive Falcon Heavy. The new pad will also be built to take people into space. SpaceX currently readies its rockets from a horizontal position, slides them to the pad on rails, and raises them to a vertical position before launch. But 39A will be built for vertical installation, "which a lot of the payloads nowadays demand, especially the government payloads including crew," Colloredo says.

One pad, many rockets

KSC Pad 39B Construction in 2013

NASA

Meanwhile, construction is also under way at nearby Pad 39B. This will be the launch site for the Space Launch System (SLS), NASA's vision for the big rocket that will blast manned missions bound for places beyond Earth orbit. Paired with the Orion capsule, this could be how NASA sends its astronauts to asteroids or Mars. (It's also a more traditionally run NASA program, which means the project is expected to meet delays, underfunding, and shifting political whims.)

Even in a best-case scenario, SLS won't launch often. "We think we have lot of time there where SLS won't need the pad," Colloredo says. So his team looked for ways to make the pad generic enough to host other rockets, and bring more business to Cape Canaveral. For example, NASA devised a new lighting protection system for the pad that can protect many kinds of rockets, not just the SLS.

"We now use what's called an isolated system: It's essentially a Faraday cage that you're building around the pad so that really anything below inside this cone is protected," he said. "We didn't just design it around SLS, we designed the lightning protection around the tallest vehicle that could roll out of the Vertical Assembly Building. So a 400-foot-tall rocket could roll into pad 39B and not have a problem with lightning."

Another example is the flame deflectors, which channel the fiery exhaust away from the vehicle and launchpad. NASA typically engineers those deflectors around the schematics and thrust of the one vehicle they plan to launch off the pad. Not anymore. "We tried to cover the whole spectrum of any rocket that might impinge on it, and then we designed what is essentially a universal flame deflector," Colloredo says.

Once and future launch king?

The new KSC is making room for smaller rockets as well, which may share space with the big boys. Next to 39B is a small pad, called 39C, which is a stripped-down place for smaller rockets to launch. Using the same launch control center and sharing some infrastructure, 39C is really a plug-and-play launchpad. "I call it a MASH unit meets NASA, where everything's mobile..." he says. "Essentially you roll in your rocket and bring your ground service equipment and launch."

"I call it a MASH unit meets NASA."

To Colloredo, the turnaround at Kennedy is palpable, and the future, if uncertain, is bright. If nothing else, the outlook is certainly better than when the Shuttle retired. "We didn't have a manifest, we didn't need any of our launchpads," he says. "Now we're basically up to five that are under construction and two more we've announced that are just open sites."

NASA/Kim Shiflett

He sees KSC regaining its stature as a spaceflight center—particularly one that launches astronauts—by being a good launchpad host. "Over time, we'll see the migration of not only launches here, but more than likely landings," he says. "And then not far behind that would be manufacturing, testing, and [more]."

There is one more sales job for Colloredo's team, though: selling NASA itself on the new dynamic.

"I don't know that the entire workforce is 100 percent onboard yet, just because it takes time to figure out what this new reality is, but I would say certainly we're definitely tuned the corner," he says. "Most people that come to NASA love the shuttle, but now that they see that there are these other opportunities for different spacecraft, different companies, different vehicle configurations. It looks like something they may have never dreamed of."

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